Barbara Michaels - The Walker in Shadows

Pat wondered, with some apprehension, how Josef would take this revelation. His heavy dark brows drew together, but when he spoke his voice was milder than she had expected.

"I'm sure you enjoyed meeting clandestinely, thwarting the heavy father. Romantic as hell, wasn't it? Well, never mind. May I see the diary, or is it reserved for those under thirty?"

"Be careful," Mark said, handing him the book. "It was well wrapped, but damp got in, all the same, and since it's been exposed to the air it has deteriorated. If you don't mind, Mr. Friedrichs, I've got a suggestion…"

"Well?"

"Maybe Mom could transcribe it," Mark said. "She's pretty good on the typewriter." He grinned at his mother, the recollection of last-minute term papers hastily typed fresh in his mind. Pat did not grin back at him.

"It will take forever," she protested.

"Not so long. She didn't keep a day-by-day diary, she just wrote things down when she was in the mood, or when something important happened. And a lot of the text is illegible-rotted by damp, or too faded to read."

"But you've already read it-so I assume," Pat said. "We've got a lot of packing to do. If the poltergeist comes back tonight, it may smash the things that are left."

"Mom-trust me, will you?" Mark leaned forward. A lock of dark hair fell across his forehead, and his eyes burned with sincerity. "I'm right on the verge. I really am. Let's go over it once more. Anyhow…"A look of such consternation came over his face that Pat recoiled, wondering what horrific revelations were in store. "Anyhow," Mark went on, "it's way past lunchtime. No wonder my brain is so weak. You type, I'll read aloud… and Kathy can get lunch."

Pat found it easier than she had expected to keep up with Mark's dictation. Damp had disfigured the edges of the pages, so that the only legible portions were in the middle. There were no dates; presumably they had been written on the illegible tops of the pages. Yet, scattered and broken as the fragments were, floating in time, they formed a picture in Pat's mind as her fingers reproduced the words.

Three children, growing up in the wilderness of western Maryland… The girl, small and delicate and blond, dressed in the calico simplicity her father's spartan creed required: had not the Apostle Paul warned against vanity in women? Her brother, as dark as she was fair, trained to sobriety by the same rigorous faith, yet fascinated by and tempted to mischief by the imperious older cousin.

In all their schemes Peter was the ringleader and Edward was the one who got caught. It was Peter who dared Edward to climb the tallest tree in the yard, but when the younger boy, shorter of limb and breath, was unable to get down, he was blamed, and punished. The idea of dressing up like ghosts and scaring "the darkies" was Peter's; but it was Edward who tripped over the trailing sheets in the act of escaping and was soundly thrashed by his father. Even when Peter was caught, his indulgent parents refused to punish him. "Uncle Al laughed very loud," Susan recorded, on one occasion when the three had gotten tipsy on homemade wine. Poor Edward had to eat his dinner off the mantel for several days after that scandalous affair.

Gradually, over the years, the tone of the diary changed. The early accounts of childhood mischief turned to a young girl's inarticulate record of parties and beaux. The first was Sammy Hart, who kissed Susan at a school picnic. But Sammy did not last long. "He has spots on his face," Susan recorded contemptuously. References to contemporary historical events were few and far between. Like most fifteen-year-olds, Susan was much more interested in her own emotional problems than in national disasters.

Kathy, who was already familiar with the material, made sandwiches, then took over the typewriter while Pat snatched a bite and a cup of coffee. Somehow Mark managed to read and eat simultaneously. Pat went back to the typewriter after a brief interval. She was conscious of a queer feeling of urgency, as if some sort of deadline were approaching, and as Mark read on, her fingers flicked over the keys with a speed that exceeded her best record.

In 1859, outside events shook Susan's peaceful world.

"Father and Uncle Al quarreled again. Something about that Mr. Brown at Harpers Ferry. Usually Uncle Al laughs when they argue, but this time…"

"Go on," Pat said, her fingers poised.

No one answered. She looked up and saw, with a shock of inexplicable alarm, that considerable time had passed. The windows were darkening.

"The rest of that entry is gone," Mark said. "II doesn't require much imagination to finish it, though."

Pat leaned back in the chair, flexing stiff fingers. Josef bent over her.

"Take a break," he urged. "You've been working loo hard."

"Want me to type for a while?" Kathy asked.

"That's okay. Let's all rest for a minute. Isn't it funny what a clear picture we're getting of these people? Mr. Turnbull sounds like an easygoing sort of man."

"I don't think Mr. Bates was so bad either," Kathy said. "He must have relaxed his Puritan ideas as he got older, because Susan talks about pretty clothes and jewelry- and he went all the way to Philadelphia to get the doll she wanted for her birthday-"

"And her mother made a complete wardrobe for it," Pat said. "A little fur muff, and bonnets, and everything."

"They sound like a nice family," Josef agreed. He added sardonically, "Too nice to be poltergeists, is that the idea?"

The others ignored this cynical question.

"The really shadowy figure is Mrs. Turnbull," Pat said thoughtfully. "Susan only mentions her once or twice."

"I guess the poor woman really was sickly," Kathy said. "I though, when we first read the references to her being ailing, that she was a professional hypochondriac." "Women were supposed to be fragile and fainting," Pat said. "The men loved it; it made them feel like heroes."

"Mary Jane wasn't fragile," Kathy said. "No wonder she never caught a husband-as they said in those days."

"She sounds like a tough lady," Pat agreed, smiling, as she recalled Susan's caustic comments about the big sister who spoiled so many of their games and scolded her for being unwomanly because she liked to go fishing with the boys. "But don't forget Mary Jane was already a grown woman when they were still children. She probably thought she was only doing her duty. She never did marry, did she? I wonder why."

"Maybe she was homely," Josef suggested frivolously. "Ugly women don't catch husbands, even today." He smiled at Pat.

"That shows how much you know," she said. "A well-dowered young lady could always get a husband. And I suspect the same thing is true today."

"So, maybe she didn't have a dowry," Josef said. "I suspected Turnbull's financial position was shaky."

Mark had fallen into a brown study, fingering the crumbling pages of the diary. Now he looked up at the others, scowling.

"Do you guys want to hear the rest of this, or are you enjoying your historical gossip? I mean, my God, you sound like Mom and Mrs. Groft when they get started on the neighbors."

"I guess we do at that," Pat said. "All right, Mark, I'm ready. Go ahead."

"It gets worse from now on," Mark said. "The condition of the diary, I mean. Whole pages are stuck together. The next thing I can decipher comes in the middle of a sentence. It just says, '… away to school. I don't know how they found out. We were so careful. Someone must have seen us. I never saw Father so angry. Always before, when I cried, he, would soften; but not this time. He found the loose board in the wall and nailed it shut. But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters now because he is gone and…' "

Mark's voice faded into silence as the writing faded out.

"He being Peter, I gather," Josef said. "Mark, you've known this all along. Why didn't you tell us, instead of pretending to make wild guesses?"